


1825

by risokura



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 08:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2382092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/risokura/pseuds/risokura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eighteen is riddled with anxiety, twenty five plagued by regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1825

**Author's Note:**

> I've been anxious all week.

_Eighteen_.

Eighteen is an age people drag around as a badge of courage. The wounds of high school are still fresh and stinging on the adult sized kneecaps of a child. The naivety of childhood lingers over your head like a broken record spinning on and on and on, even when you tell it _hush_ , _stay quiet._ You see the last four years of your life like some test you tried not to fail. You only passed because time took pity on you and decided that fate didn’t know exactly _what_ to do with you, so it let you go. Let you drift on as unimportant and meaningless.

Your existence was something that was meant to be tested. From fourteen until the point where most of the world considers you an _adult_ , you were faced with pointless trivialities. Things to _test_ you so to speak, when the only thing it did was drive up your ire and leave you wanting to tear apart your pillow as you screamed in it through the night. You went through your teenage clichés, totted them around like the pins a soldier displays proudly on his uniform. The years tick away, days roll in and out. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, _eighteen._

Eighteen is the year in which you recall all the stupid things you’ve done—which, don’t worry, will happen again once you hit twenty one and eventually, twenty five—and you think to yourself: _you’ve made it_. The coveted age of liberation in which you’re free to do whatever you want. Most people run head first into college, some find themselves bored to death with their first taste of employment. Your life is flooded with endless possibility—or that’s what people like to say. All those people you knew from childhood have all changed and grown with you, yet some stragglers somehow stay the same.

You buy cigarettes for the first time and the cashier scoffs at your ID, believing you are a child. It’s just something you have to try once, something _adult_ that you can finally do. Relationships you thought were trivial or ‘just for fun’ in high school become magnified. You go through a series of guys or girls, picking what you don’t like and what you do. You don’t necessarily have to have sex, but you know it’s there. It’s all anyone ever talks about or thinks about. And you think it’s important, so maybe you’ll try it to. It doesn’t really matter. You’re young after all.

But with all its freedom, eighteen is a lie. Eighteen is the age of false inclusion. Still can’t drink, still can’t get into clubs. Still can’t do all those _adult_ things that loom over your head until twenty one. You believe you have so much power, but in actuality, there is none at all. Eighteen is the transition from senseless idealism to welcomed cynicism. It’s just not apparent yet underneath all that fluff and noise that society has thrown in your face since the day of your birth.

For Roxas, eighteen was the year in which his friends dispersed amongst the three other corners of the country and left him anxious and gasping for breath underneath the warmth of his mother’s duvet. Too poor to attend college, too inexperienced to get a job, too sick to even care.

-x-

_Twenty five._

Twenty five is the beginning of the end. The bracket moves to encompass your _thirties_ now. You’re not longer part of that young and _hip_ demographic of eighteen to twenty four. You thought you knew what the real world was, but you were so wrong. So very, very wrong.

Most days you stare at your ceiling wondering how in the fuck you made it these last seven years of _adulthood_ without killing yourself. You’ve moved away to a foreign city two states away because that was the _adult_ thing to do—you had to get out and make it on your own. Your mother’s voice on the phone echoes from two hundred miles away, she asks you if you’ve got enough money to buy groceries… how are you doing with your rent? The guilt seeps into your veins, she always worries about you even when you tell her not to. When will she see you for the person you’ve become, not the baby you once were?

College is a dream that never happened. Or, at least, that’s what it feels like. You don’t really bring up the past anymore because there’s no point to. But, sometimes while you’re sitting all alone in a coffee shop, clutching your coffee that you could only afford because you sacrificed your grocery money again, you’ll catch a glimpse of the person that you used to be. Things that were acceptable at twenty, you try to break out of at twenty five. Throwing up outside of a bar and meaningless sex in some stranger’s bed don’t really give you the same thrill that they used to. You ask yourself if you’ve changed as a consequence of getting older, or is it just the result of _been there, done that_?

Most of your friends are shacking up. They all have significant others in some way, shape or form. Engagements, weddings, children—not in that order of course, but who’s judging? You think back to the days when you guys were running around, drunk at night and thinking of all the stupid shit you could do to get yourselves in trouble. You lived for the stories you would be able to tell, not the consequences of what you knew was wrong. Now they’re too busy talking about floral arrangements, mortgages and 401k’s, none of which school prepared you for. What was the point in dropping 30k a year in tuition for a pointless sheet of paper again?

Everyone you were close to has become a meaningless face on an illuminated screen. So and so just went to Bermuda with their husband, so scroll through their pictures and _like_ it. Doesn’t matter that you two haven’t talked since high school graduation. Your friends all have lives of their own and can’t be bothered to hear you bemoan about how life is going nowhere for you when they’re struggling to find a place of their own. No one knows what they’re doing … but they all lie like they do.

You think back to the last few years of your life and wonder if time really _is_ running out. Are you wasting your potential? Did you even have any to begin with? So many wasted opportunities, you know you had other options. They pile on your back and you force yourself to roll over, ignoring them in the darkness of your barely furnished room so you can try and sleep at night.

For Axel, twenty five was the year he spent living alone in some random city because he needed a change of scenery. He wore inadequacy like a scarlet letter burned brightly on his chest for the world to see, knowing only of regret and disdain for the stupidity and wastefulness of his youth.

-x-

They are two numbers. Eighteen and twenty five, starting and midpoint. They were the textbook definition of opposites attract.

In Roxas, Axel sees himself. Young, so _damn_ young and he doesn’t even realize it. With Axel, Roxas feels his blood spike to a fever pitch. He knows things about the world that Roxas can’t even begin to fathom. On both sides of the spectrum, things seem so far away for both of them. Roxas’ unclear future and Axel’s thoroughly lived through past.

Axel is silent and he is _everything_ Roxas wishes he could be. Roxas desperately wants to be done with growing up and living in a world where everything _and_ everyone is immature. He’s tired of hearing people tell him that these are the best years of his life and he’ll find nothing better.

Roxas finds himself sitting cross legged on the floor of Axel’s apartment, an old flannel sheet pulled tightly around his shoulders as he voices his never ending _teenage angst_ to the redhead who’s tapping away at a maddening pace on the laptop behind him. The older male listens with amusement as Roxas rattles off all the _cool_ things his best friends are doing in college.

Although he doesn't admit to it, Axel hears the bitterness in Roxas' voice at having been left behind. But Roxas doesn't _care_ , a bitter statement the young man likes tack on when he thinks he's being too whiny. He'll look away from Axel when he feels like he's talking too much, but Axel just sits silently and listens to Roxas' aches and pains and internalizes them as his own. Long ago, this was his life.

-x-

Eighteen is flanked with worry over what isn’t.

Twenty five bitterly laughs at what is.

-x-

Roxas watches Axel in the early morning fog of autumn, clouded with the steam of freshly poured espresso and warm milk. Roxas was never one for coffee, but Axel tells him this is something _adults_ do. Even if you hate the damn stuff, drink it anyway. It’s the _adult_ thing to do.

In the morning, Axel's green eyes are always half lidded, with his over plucked eyebrows raised in vague amusement as he slams a five down on the counter and mumbles his order from behind a heavy and black scarf. There is an invisible weight that sags his shoulders and bows his back with horrible posturing. Roxas wonders, with a cup of slowly cooling hot chocolate between his hands, why Axel is always tired. There's always some weight, some type of  _burden_ , bringing him down. Roxas doesn't ask, he just sits and silently watches as Axel has done before.

They walk in silence as Roxas lights up under a canopy of golden trees. Axel presses the plastic lid of his coffee to his lips, drinking his bitter concoction of morning brew and silently muses to himself about the terrible habit the younger man has picked up. Another _adult_ thing to do.

It's always the tortured souls who consume a diet made up of nothing but cigarettes and coffee, a comment Axel makes with a wry smile on his face. Roxas doesn't comment on his sardonic observation, but merely languishes in the smell of the cigarette burning in the cool autumn air. He likes the way it coats his lungs, his clothes and his mind. Something to fill him up and calm the anxiety on the inside. Axel, in turn, consumes more coffee than he possibly should. His hands shake, but he doesn't care.

The sky slowly turns from an early morning grey, to the darkest hues of night within a blink of an eye. The weather grows colder and Roxas tries a little harder to reach for Axel’s hand, but he can’t keep up. Seven years isn’t a long time.

Or, at least, that’s what Axel says to remind himself that it is.

-x-

Eighteen is a brewing breakdown that simmers, threatening to boil over the sides of the pot if it isn’t contained. It’s kept stuffed down underneath freshly mowed green lawns and a dream of moving somewhere different than the place where you grew up. It is a naïve dream that brings you across the doorsteps of many, but with few open doors. Eighteen may be riddled with fear, terrified of the unknown and anxious to know what comes next. But, eighteen doesn’t give up hope. Eighteen never stops.

Twenty five is the seven year aftermath, never being able to quite pick up the pieces and fit them back into place. It’s knowing, feeling, experiencing, _breathing_ everything you thought you were right about, turned wrong. You wonder how the years went by and you ended up in this place. You remember foolish idealism and unwavering resolve. You were anxious, but were you not plagued by regret. You are seven years wiser, and what do you have to show for it?

At times, you wonder which is worse.

-x-

They fuck. Roxas smokes. Axel tries to breathe.

It’s another textbook definition of young adult romance, or the clichéd scope of the typical young adult romance. Axel finds little room for originality, Roxas finds everything to be sharp and focused and _new_.

The scars on Axel's back from Roxas' fingernails almost fit the fingerprints of his best friend from when he was nineteen. That one boy who wanted to give him everything, and he gave nothing in return. These days, he's on the other side of the country with a wife and a new life soon to be brought into the world. He asked Axel to be his best man at his wedding, a joyous and extravagant affair that had Axel whispering to himself, _what if_? What if he hadn't rejected him? Where would they be?  
  
Roxas is wrapped in his arms in the haze of an early winter morning, just as the sun rises from behind the mountains in the distance. Axel speaks with a harrowing emptiness in his tone. Roxas rests his cheek against Axel's chest and allows the vibrations of his raspy voice to remind him where he is again. Eighteen has become nineteen, and Roxas wonders if he's supposed to feel any different.

Axel tells him stories of first loves long lost to the passage of time. A girl he thought he could love to please his mother, to convince himself that he wasn't the faggot his father claimed him to be. His best friend, a tumultuous relationship that, logically, should have never existed in the first place. An old professor who was two decades ahead of him in experience, but gave him the world on a silver platter. Roxas doesn't have any stories to share, he's never known what love is or why he should want it... _crave it_.

The redhead laughs to himself at the fallacy of his youth and tells Roxas not to worry. Love is a horrible, _horrible_ thing that he can do without. He's better off pretending people don't exist. Its easier to just never give out your hear and keep it hidden from society, from the world. There's no room for bleeding hearts in a world such as theirs.

Roxas chews on his bottom lip, unsure of what to say. Axel sounds bitter, but he’s not, he's a realist. These days, no one has time to spare. No one can talk. Everyone is always _busy, busy, busy_. Wrapped up in their own lives of nothingness and excess. He finds it comforting, to some degree, that he can just slip off without a word and no one—(maybe except his mother)—will worry. Roxas questions if growing older means slowly driving everyone off until you’re alone. Axel doesn’t have an answer for him and just shrugs. It’s inevitable, he wants to say. But he doesn’t. The boy needs to find the answer for himself. Seven years, _seven years_.

Axel pulls the sheets up around Roxas’ shoulders, closes his eyes and murmurs for him to sleep. They’ve talked for long enough. There is nothing left for either of them to say.

-x-

Spring comes and the world unfurls in a bright sea of green and blue, having awakened from its long dormant sleep. Roxas finally grabs hold of the sun and squelches the meaningless, rapid cycling of eighteen. Axel watches from tinted mirrors of black and grey, and simply wonders. Twenty five doesn’t dwell.

Roxas squashes a half smoked pack of Parliaments under his feet—( _Silver, ultra lights._ The pussy kind, Axel says. If you're gonna commit to lung cancer, fucking _commit_ )—and tells Axel that he doesn't need them anymore. It was just something to experiment with and he's done with trying to fill himself with a self destructive crutch. The anxiety is there, but he doesn't let it take over him anymore. Axel drinks his coffee and nods. Maybe he should do the same. But, who cares about bad habits when we're all gonna die anyway? 

Roxas spreads out in the grass, closes his eyes and he tells Axel that he doesn't know what to do with himself anymore, but he's going to try and find his own way. Axel wheezes and huffs at all the pollen in the air, his throat itches and his eyes burn. But, he manages to tell the kid that it sounds like a plan. Any plan is a good plan, he surmises. Thinking he hears skepticism in his voice, Roxas opens his eyes, intent on looking at Axel and finds that he is blinded by the sun. Axel continues to say that he isn't mocking him, just that as young as Roxas is, he shouldn't lock himself into one fixed direction in life.

He doesn't understand Axel and Roxas falsely believes he's just giving him meaningless advice as everyone has in his life thus far, but he isn't. His words, of course, come from experience. But, he isn't lecturing the boy. Life is a cacophony, a mess that no one understands no matter how many introspective pieces on existentialism humans continue to spit out from the deep and dirty recesses of their souls. Dissonance constantly interrupts equilibrium and there is no way to fix it. Just as one need is fulfilled, another backslides into the abyss and you have to delve back into the darkness and pull it back to the light.

Axel tells Roxas it doesn't matter what he decides because life will never fit within the confines of his standards. He'll believe one thing and switch it to something else, even when he says _I'll never change._ It may seem pessimistic, but its inevitable.

-x-

Roxas's friends return at the beginning of the summer and Axel goes back home to see his mother for two weeks. When he returns, Roxas is standing outside of his apartment building in the sweltering heat of the mid-June sun, two iced coffee's in hand and a frown on his face. Roxas whispers a happy belated birthday to him, twenty six emerges from twenty five and things don't feel any different.

They lay together, side by side on the floor of Axel's apartment, bodies slick with sweat as the AC barely pumps out air overhead. Roxas finds himself drifting away from his friends and it _hurts_. Axel laughs loud and hard at the statement and it hurts his throat, hurts his mind, hurts his heart. Drifting, the boy doesn't know what _drifting_ is.

But, he tells him this is normal. If it hurts, it's normal.

-x-

Autumn pops up again and nineteen and twenty six stand together, melded toward by absurdity and apathy.

Roxas wears Axel's scarf and inhales the scent of coffee and warm skin. Axel clutches a fresh pack of cigarettes in his hand and rips the film off the package as Roxas pockets his change. Axel lights up first and then leans forward to press his tip to the cigarette in Roxas's mouth. It feels appropriate even if Roxas claims he _quit_ and Axel hasn't touched them since he was twenty three.

Axel tells him he's leaving town, moving back east to be with his _ma_. He worries about her and wants to be closer. Roxas feels his heart tug and his breath catch in the back of his throat because he doesn't understand distance just yet. He still holds onto his belief that a relationship can't last, be it romantic or friendship, when there's so much distance between two people. He doesn't understand that the years will toil on and daily figures in his life fade away like ghostly apparitions he hallucinated into existence. It's like the lyrics in that one song he remembered from that band Axel said he listened to when he was Roxas' age— _I_ _know it's over and it never really began, but in my heart it was so real._

Axel knows the feeling that Roxas has no words for. He tells him not to be anxious, to take a deep breath and calm down. Axel knows the boy has issues with getting riled up over the smallest of things, and he doesn't need him having a breakdown over this. Life will throw more curve balls at him, he needs to be prepared for this.

Roxas sits on the taped and sealed boxes of Axel's apartment and wonders what this encounter was supposed to bring him. He's secured a part time job down at the coffee house Axel used to frequent. He's going to save up his money and apply for part time admission at the community college in town. Maybe, if his grades are good enough, he'll be able to get a scholarship and find his one way ticket out of town. Axel, again, tells him its a plan. Underneath it all, he silently regrets the drive he never had. Roxas  _has_ a plan, Axel blindly followed orders.

-x-

Eventually, he ships everything away and Axel watches the last remnants of his twenty fifth year trickle away from him with Roxas at his side. He tells Roxas to keep his scarf as a reminder of where he was and how he is now. Axel's hand is heavy and warm as he threads his fingers through the kid's wild, blond hair and tells him not to be led astray by his regrets. Roxas wishes he had parting advice to Axel, but he doesn't. But, its okay. Axel doesn't need it. With Roxas he is reminded of his former self. A person that was unmarred by time, a young and idealistic soul wholly unconcerned about the _adult_ side of life.

Eighteen sees opportunity, twenty five see redundancy. Axel leaves, his dark boots crunching leaves, walking forward to crush long dead dreams under his feet. But, while watching Axel fade into the distance, Roxas sees differently. Ahead, the path is illuminated, but everything on the horizon is muddled. Axel turns behind him, seeing the same path, but in reverse and for a moment he stops.

They stare at each other for one final moment. Roxas smiles, slowly and silently. Axel returns the smile with one of his own, before turning around and continues wordlessly in his stride.


End file.
